There’s the old project management saying: good, cheap and fast… pick two.
In the business world I’ve noticed that three characteristics generally determine success: smart, hard working and charismatic. Sure, the definition of success widely varies but for the purposes of this post, I’ll define it as, “the ability to achieve lofty goals.”
If you have one of these characteristics above you can get by fairly well. The smart, lazy, boring gal who manages to muddle away at her corporate job, she’s doin’ alright.
If you’ve got two of the above characteristics you are in the top quartile of successful people. The dogged, friendly sales guy is makin’ it rain but won’t get to CEO.
But the ladies and gents who really crush it, are the ones who are intelligent, relentless and likable. While smarts can’t generally be picked up, the other two can be cultivated. Work harder then everyone else, make sure you genuinely care about the people you work with (never sacrifice relationships for individuals project deliverables) and you’ll get to where you wanna be.
This past weekend I gave my first two lectures at SPJain on paid online marketing. I thought it went pretty well, the students seemed really engaged and interested in the material. The slides, course outline and videos are posted below. I’ve also agreed to do a 6 week course at another business school: NMIMS (more or less following this outline), if anyone has any ideas on how to improve this session or the course outline, please let me know.
Video:
The videos from the actual lecture didn’t come out to well (you can see them here and here). Below is the same session I gave to our team internally:
Introduction
iTunes Case Study – You are the marketing manager responsible for launching the iTunes Store in India
- What are your objectives?
- How do you go about achieving those objectives?
Goals:
- Discuss branding vs. performance objectives
- Discuss differences between online and offline marketing (targeting, measurement, reach)
- Discuss the marketing funnel (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty, Advocacy)
- Review options for online advertising in relationship to the funnel
Review terminology:
- Impression, CPM, CPC, CPA/L/S, Goal, Conversion, CTR
Methods of Online Advertising
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Google Adwords Example
- How does Google determine which ads to display to users? Keyword, bid, location, quality score / relevance (clickthrough)
- Why are the bulk of most ad budgets allocated to SEM http://mashable.com/2009/07/08/social-media-marketing-growth/#mb – intent
Ads on Social Networks – Facebook Ads
- Targeting based on demographics
Ad networks – Right Media Exchange
- What is the advantage of purchasing an ad on an network rather then directly on a site itself – Non-premium, performance based, auction, reach
Affiliate Sales – Amazon
- Description of the affiliate model
Email Marketing – Email Brain
- Review analytics for email marketing
- Discuss limitations on reach
Revisit iTunes Case Study
How can you determine effectiveness of online marketing campaigns?
- Demonstrate eCPM / eCPA calcualtions
- Link online marketing metrics to sales
Ask students to come up with a marketing plan
- Split class into branding vs. performance
- Determine goals and budget allocation based on historical results
Measurement and Course Correction
Demonstrate Google Analytics
- Show ecommerce analytics
- Glean insights, create hypothesis based on analytics data (i.e. per visit value of certain states are high, let’s see if additional marketing – online or offline – will help us generate more sale with less spend)
Course Correction
- 3 slides for creative, source and keyword performance
- Discuss actively managing campaigns and getting rid of underperforming ads, sources, keywords
